Emissions
by Speaker for the Dead aka 17
Summary: The crew of the Starship Voyager are used as a tool to aid a desperate planet's cry for help- Earth...
1. Emissions: Prologue

emissionsprlge ****

Emissions:Prologue

Nearly 600 billion tons of carbon dioxide has been produced by the world's industrialized nations since 1950.

During the past ten years, average global temperatures have increased by 0.5 degrees C.

In contrast, a drop of 3 degrees Celsius in global temperatures brought on the last Ice Age.

Rising sea levels threaten the existence of thousands of coasts and the people who live on them.

Heat waves have claimed more than 2500 lives in India since 1998.

Climbing temperatures have thrown weather systems into flux in recent years, triggering unpredictable disasters such as the flood along Ohio River in March 1997 which cost 30 lives and more than $500 million in property damage alone.

America contains 4% of the world's population and produces 25% of the world's carbon dioxide.

****


	2. Emissions: The Parable

emissions ****

Emissions :The Parable

"That's the way life is. It's like a free radical reaction- you never know what you're gonna get, you won't know when it's gonna end. The only thing that's certain is that our fate lies in our hands."

--June Yang

Chakotay was wondering if attending this conference had been the right thing to do in the first place. He was seated beside the captain in an enormous chamber, in one of the antigrav units that lined the vast circular chamber walls. In the center of the chamber were a small group of dedicated scientists, presenting their case with the aid of a three-dimensional holographic projector.

He could tell that Janeway was worried. This conference was unprecedented in the history of the Delta Quadrant. For the first time in eons, the consolidated powers across the quadrant sat side by side, contemplating their future. The conference had been organized by the Atari, a group of technologically-advanced beings whose system of subspace tunnels to bring all these warp cultures to one central place. He thought he saw several familiar faces, including the Kazon, the Viidians, the Hirogen… people whom they thought they'd long left behind.

The Atari had called all these spacefaring cultures together to draw them to the conclusions of the studies they'd made of matter-antimatter propulsed travel. After years of extensive research, they'd concluded that the volatile plasma effluents of warp travel was disrupting the fabric of space-time and would ultimately lead to its collapse. As Chakotay watched the marching procession of figures, statistics and scenarios unfolding before him, he felt more and more uneasy as well. How were they ever going to undo such serious damage done?

The Atari finished off by saying that the only way to remedy it at the present was to sign a pact that restricted warp travel within to warp two within the quadrant, the maximum speed at which the damage done to the fabric of space-time was reversible. 

This immediately caused a major uproar in the chamber. People stood up, protesting, while others burst into laughter, proclaiming that the Atari were insane. Janeway shot Chakotay a worried look, both thinking, _warp two?_

*******

"No, Chakotay, I'm not doing it." the captain was walking briskly along the corridors of the _Voyager_. "Warp two- that's crazy. By the time we reach home all of us are going to be more than a hundred years old."

Chakotay was silent, thinking. "I don't know, Captain," he said at length, shrugging as they stepped into the turbolift. "You can't ignore everything that the Atari have said."

Janeway pursed her lips together. "There's not much else I can do, Chakotay. I refuse to restrict our travel to warp two. We've been doing nothing but trying to develop a faster way to get home all these years, and along come a bunch of precocious bumpkins trying to tell us to move slower? I find it unacceptable."

"The Atari are much more advanced than Starfleet and they've done a lot of research into this area," countered Chakotay as the turbolift arrived on Deck One. "It took them long enough to realize that high speed warp travel was causing compression waves tearing apart the fabric of spacetime.'

"And a long enough time to come up with a way to remedy it," she responded as they stepped into the briefing room. She stopped and faced him squarely. "Regardless of what they say, I'm not going to do anything which will decrease our average travel speed. Because, first things first, are the needs of the crew of my ship. That's my priority."

The crew glanced up at the two of them as they entered. "What was that all about?" asked Torres.

Janeway headed her for seat at the head of the oval table. "I'm going to make a decision which some of you are undoubtedly going to find unpopular," she said heavily, "but that's not going to change my mind." She then went on to describe the situation they'd found themselves in. There was silence from the crew as she finished.

The first to speak was Paris. "So that's it? We're not signing onto the pact?" he asked, spreading his hands wide. "And continue wrecking the fabric of space-time?"

"Are you nuts?" countered Kim. "Signing onto the pact will put another fifty years onto the length of our journey at least! Some of us might not even survive until that long!"

Paris frowned, thinking. "Surely there must be some other way to dispose of this plasma effluent which is so harmful," he ruminated. "After all, we did managed to get past the problem of destabilizing subspace with a new warp-core design… Given time, we might actually be able to modify our warp core to stop producing these pollutants. Right, B'Elanna?"

Torres shrugged. "I don't know. Until I get a closer look at the problem I won't be able to gauge the required magnitude of the solution. Off-hand, though, I'd say we don't have enough resources and the equipment to come up with such a drastic measure. I mean, yes, we _can_ modify the warp core, but our energy resources are strained, and I've yet to devise new means of coping with _that_ problem. The only way as I see it now is to travel at higher velocities because the nature of the matter-antimatter reaction makes it more efficient at speeds of warp five and beyond... and that happens to contravene with what the Atari are suggesting."

Janeway shook her head. "The Atari have done years of research on this and failed to come up with anything. I'm afraid our options are pretty much limited now."

Neelix shook his head slowly. "It sounds pretty serious… Captain, you can't just ignore the fact that our warp drive is causing damage to the environment around us!" 

"I'm not ignoring the fact, Mr. Neelix… it's just that I can't do anything about it." Janeway sighed heavily. "We have enough problems to handle as it is… the Viidians, for example, are in the vicinity, and they still remember that incident with the _Delta_ _Flyer_."

"You're kidding!" exclaimed Paris, straightening up in his chair. "How many times do we have to tell them that it wasn't our fault?"

"The Viidian ambassador still seems to think so," replied Chakotay. "And is still demanding a public apology."

"We weren't _anywhere_ near Viidian space when the two shuttles collided-" protested the Doctor, but Janeway cut off his complaints with a wave of her hand, calling for silence.

"I understand and appreciate all your concerns," she said heavily, "but as I have mentioned before, reaching Earth is our first priority. And presently there are one too many things waiting for our attention." She glanced steadily around the crew. "Your objections will all be noted in my log. Dismissed."

******

B'Elanna Torres was working frantically in Engineering when Chakotay approached her. She stopped work for a moment, eyeing the first Officer warily. "What now'?" she asked cautiously. "I'm not done with the realignment of the dilithium matrix yet. Tell the captain to give me another half-hour, and I'll be finished with it. I promise."

Chakotay shook his head slightly. "The captain didn't send me. I just needed to talk. To get your professional opinion."

"What on?" She seemed mystified for a moment, then it struck her. "Oh. The pollution problem…" 

"Is the captain right?" he asked. "Is there no other way out of this situation?"

B'Elanna shrugged helplessly and furiously. "Look at us, Chakotay, just look!" She gestured around Engineering. "It's all very well to talk about saving the universe and playing our part, but can't you see the reality of the situation? We're barely capable of producing enough power to support ourselves. The designer of this ship obviously never thought to proof it for years of overuse… and as a result we're facing a major energy crisis right now. I have so much to do as it is… there's no time to do the modifications you're asking!" She smacked her fist softly on the nearest console, gritting her teeth. "It's not that we're apathetic to the situation, Chakotay. Most of the crew are aware of the fact that we should be doing something about our emissions. We recognize the sobriety of the situation. But the main problem is that less than half of us are willing to spend the rest of the trip in warp two. The captain is right, Chakotay… it's liability we aren't willing to risk."

"If you were given the time and the resources to modify our warp core, could you do it?"

B'Elanna frowned. "I'd say it isn't beyond our capability… it is an engine design problem, after all… I might not be able to eliminate all our byproducts, but at least I'll be able to cut down our emissions." She sighed deeply. "But it's impossible, Chakotay. I think the captain will veto it… she has too many things on her hands to handle."

"Don't worry about that part." Chakotay assured her. "I'll talk to the captain."

******

She was teleconferencing with the Viidian ambassador when Chakotay arrived. He politely stood at attention in front of her desk while she completed the call.

Finally the Viidian signed off, and she glanced up at Chakotay, one hand rubbing her temple in exhaustion. "This is turning out to be a diplomatic disaster. The Vidiians are lodging one official protest after another, the Atari continually pressure us to sign the pact, I have complaints coming in from malcontents in every quarter…" She drew in a breath and released it in a deep sigh. "I wonder what everyone thinks of us right now? Some stubborn, uncooperative group of antisocial misanthropes?"

He considered her, hating to see her like this, berating herself. She was obviously uncomfortable with the decision she had to make, yet unable to do anything about it. He was here to change that. "We don't have to do it that way…"

She exhaled a short, sharp breath, knowing what he was going to say and not liking it. She held up a hand. "Commander, please…" She pushed her chair out, preparing to leave.

"Captain," he said, grabbing her arm to stop her. "Listen to me! I've spoken to B'Elanna. She thinks she can modify the warp core to suit the demands set down by the Atari. All she needs is the time to do it. It can be done, Kathryn, and you know it. You're the scientist, not me. We're just not trying hard enough."

She glared at him, hard and flinty, but he didn't flinch. "I'm not going to let you sweet-talk me into this, Chakotay. I've already said no to the Atari, and I'm not rescinding my decision."

Chakotay spread his hands in earnest disbelief. "I don't believe this! Captain, can't you see that this extends beyond the needs of our crew? Our decision not only affects our crew, it affects the whole _universe_. The repercussions of our decision can never be fully measured!"

Her features tightened. "I'm not giving up everything we've worked so hard for all these years just based on an unsubstantiated report which merely grasps at straws! We're alone in this quadrant, Chakotay! Every day we spend here is a risk. We wouldn't last a journey at warp two even if we tried." Her small hand clenched into a tight fist. "I'm not putting our lives at stake. I made a pledge to take this crew back to their homes, and that's what I'm going to do."

"Surely there must be some other way to circumvent this… the Atari have developed their system of tunnels. We could traverse light-years at sublight in a matter of days."

"A tunnel like that wouldn't extend all the way to the Alpha Quadrant and you know it! It's too uneconomical."

"But there must be other avenues! Others have done it-"

"What do you want me to do, Chakotay, steal transwarp technology from the Borg and destroy ourselves in the process? Don't you think that if there was another way to get back to the Alpha Quadrant we'd have already tried it? And we failed every time. Do you think I like my decision? I don't, I really don't. I'd prefer it so much if we could do it some other way. But we can't, not now. The _Voyager_ is going through a crisis now, Chakotay… please don't make it any harder for me than it already is."

"We can't only because of the way you're thinking! If you can convince yourself to ascribe to the pact, I have absolute faith that this crew can pull through."

"But ninety years…."

"Please, Kathryn, just think of this. So maybe we'll be inconvenienced. We'll take longer to get home. Don't you think I want to get back to the Alpha Quadrant? We all do. The decision would gall me as well. Maybe ninety more years of separation may seem like hell to you… but at least we doing permanent damage to our universe, and our children and our children's children won't have to deal with the mess we left behind. This universe is the only home everyone knows. How could our suffering compare to the suffering of the whole cosmos?"

"We're small," Janeway agreed softly. 

"And the world is big. And we might have to go through myriad hardships and sacrifices, but at least we'll still be here for each other. We'll still be alive, Kathryn. And it feels terribly good to be alive."

She gazed distantly out of the observation port. "It feels terribly good to be alive."

They said nothing for a moment, silently contemplating the universe as they spun in it. Then she broke out of her hushed reverie and started for the door. "I'll think about it, Chakotay, and I'll let you know."

He nodded. It was a start. A good start. "Kathryn… I'm glad we had this talk."

****

End the Parable


	3. Emissions: A note to all

emissionsessay ****

Emissions: Author's note

First off, I must offer my apologies for my gross lack of literary skills. I am no George Orwell, and satirical pieces are not exactly my forte. However, this issue of Bush and the Kyoto Pact has upset me greatly, to say in the least, and the fact that this was in conjunction with the announcement that the budget for NASA's space program had been cut made my reaction all the more adverse. So strong was my reaction to the decision that I felt a compelling need to put my thoughts and feelings down in print. So I decided to incorporate my favorite activity (fanfic writing) into it and thus was born this piece.

Now, I'm not trying to specifically implicate the US or the Bush administration for the carbon dioxide emission problem. This is a problem which concerns the whole world, especially with regard to the more industrialized ones where the degree of CO2 pollution is the highest. However, the difference between the US and the other gas-belching industrialized nations is that the others are willing to put in sacrifices to reduce the emissions, while the US has declined to do so. This is not to say that the American public does not recognize the severity of the problem and its urgency. In a recent Time/CNN poll, over seventy percent of the respondents considered the problem of global warming as "very serious" or "fairly serious", and nearly the same number (67 percent) agree that the President should develop a plan to cut down emissions of these greenhouse gases. The problem is that they were not nearly as enthusiastic when asked if they were willing to make various pecuniary sacrifices to achieve that: less than half were unwilling to pay extra for fuel, or support tough government actions which might result in larger utility bills, mild inflation or a rise in unemployment rates. It is this lack of support, I believe, which pushed the newly elected President (who, by the way, won by a painfully, I repeat, _very_ painfully tight margin- but we couldn't forget that, could we?) to back out of a promise he might not be able to deliver on.

Many of you will probably think that it's easy for me to talk of all these problems with impunity. But I do understand the discomfiture caused by taking stricter measures in reducing pollution. I live in a small crowded country on the brink of overpopulation with no natural resources whatsoever. Our carbon dioxide emission rate is unspeakable. The government has so far taken numerous steps to cut down on all the associated problems, none of which have made us very happy. My home utility bill is horrendous- it can hit a hundred dollars even though we live in a small five-room flat, turn the TV on about once a month and we hardly ever use the computer (the one with the most usage is me, and I don't go on the Net at home- I merely write my fanfic). And the price of electricity still keeps going up! Another unhappy consequence of this is the so-called Certificate of Entitlement, which one must purchase with any vehicle. Depending on the make and capacity of one's car, this innocently named COE can cost anywhere in the vicinity of $10,000 to $50,000, jacking the price of a 1.8 litre Japanese sedan car up to over $100,000. (Yes, that's a hundred thousand dollars. For a small Japanese car.) This was implemented to reduce the number of cars on the roads. Plus all the various road tax and road pricing schemes, car ownership down here certainly comes with a large price tag. 

So yes, I do empathize with what the Americans fear when they think of tough economic policies the government might implement. And for a mayor faced with an energy crisis, it is easy to see how environmental concerns would be at the bottom of his priority list, taking a backseat to just trying to keep afloat. But, IMHO, that is too homocentric a viewpoint to take. What I think is that we're missing out on the big picture here. We should be aware that we are occupying the same planet as billions upon billions of other living creatures. To me, causing suffering for these innocents just for our own sake is intrinsically wrong. We may have clawed and evolved our way up to the top of the food chain, but who are we to determine what's good and bad for our planet? The human race, for all its merits, is simply not mature nor experienced enough to predict the consequences of our actions on the Earth's ecology as a whole. Damage has already been done to our ecosphere- too much damage, in my opinion. Something needs to be done to stop this before the situation worsens. Ignoring the environmental consequences of our society's effluents in lieu of solving an energy crisis is not going to help in either situation. Consuming more energy to alleviate an energy crisis is simply going to result in a worsened condition when the world finds out that it has sucked the last droplet of oil out of the land. Would we then return to coal and fire as our fuel sources? I think not. What humanity needs is progress, not to sidestep our problems and create bigger ones for us in the process.

I'm not saying that our situation is hopeless. We have the ability to work out alternative means of obtaining energy from our surroundings in a cleaner, more non-intrusive manner; we're just not trying hard enough. There are too many things on our minds- political tensions, diseases, economic slowdowns… but when will these difficulties ever end? Hardships have plagued humanity since time immemorial. Rather than let them accrue, we should attempt to nip the problem in the bud. Or as early as possible. We need to see the forest for the trees, in a manner of speaking. Sometimes it is hard to see all these points objectively, but it is easier to think of humanity as a small cog in the great machine that is the universe. By trying to turn the wrong way, we slow the whole machine down, even destroy it. We are small, yet we are important. Somehow.

I guess that's part of the reason why I like Star Trek the way I do. Its science-fiction premise allows us to explore, however metaphorically, our relationship with the world around us. It gives us that sense of wonder we hardly ever get to experience otherwise in our dreary earth-bound lives. Thinking about Trek sometimes gives me this epiphany about our place in the universe. I mean, here we are, and we're all made out of the same carbon and hydrogen and oxygen atoms as say, a sun burning seventy-thousand light years away on the other side of the universe. And looking at the sheer diversity of life on Earth alone makes one wonder at the marvels the interactions between the same set of a hundred or less naturally found elements could bring about. Trek makes me realize that a) Nature is a lot more strange and wonderful than we can imagine, and b) we too as humans are wonderful and have such potential to do great things, both the good and the terrible. Now, if both Nature and mankind could work in harmony, what more gems could ensue from the unions of these two marvels?

If you're bored by all these environmental philosophy mumbo-jumbo, I forgive you. After all, most of us come here to be entertained by the romps of our favorite starship crew on their rounds, not the ramblings of a 17-year-old with delusions of sophistication and maturity. All I wanted to do was to get people to think, an activity many of us, so caught up in the day-to-day rush, rarely participate in anymore. (I myself am guilty of this.) If you totally hated this and can't imagine why anyone would ever think this way, that's fine by me; everyone is entitled to his own opinion (why else call us individuals?) But if you've read something that you've liked here, please do review my story, or let me know what you think about this whole pollution thing! I hope I'm not alone in this school of thought!

Thank you for suffering me long enough to read all the way to this point! ":)

****

Lt Taya 17 Janeway, who actually wrote the story weeks ago but had been deliberating forever on whether she should put it up. (To post, or not to post…) [auburnone@subspacemail.com][1]

If you liked this story, spread the message! Pass it on to a friend! (zipped word document available from [http://www.geocities.com/rjscollective/CaptainsLog/vgremsapr2001.zip][2]) And most importantly, love our planet- it's the only one we have (for now)!

   [1]: mailto:auburnone@subspacemail.com
   [2]: http://www.geocities.com/rjscollective/CaptainsLog/vgremsapr2001.zip



End file.
